One of my favorite books by Deepak Choprah (I really love them all but…) is The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: harnessing the infinite power of coincidence.
In it, he tells his life story and some other people’s stories and walks through how paying attention to coincidence has greatly enhanced how quickly he and others get to where they most want to go in life.
My main takeaway from that book is this: what is important about a coincidence is that YOU noticed it. A coincidence is not about an unseen hand arranging events for your benefit. At any given moment, there are literally 100s if not thousands of things that I could pay attention to in my field of vision. Many of them, could coincide with something else that I’m thinking or feeling. What makes a coincidence is important is that it is a clue to what my “nonlocal intelligence” is paying attention to.
If I think it’s important, it’s important because it’s only about what is mine. You see there is a part of me that has access to more information than my normal mind does. That part of me is what is attaching significance to an event.
For example, I have been thinking about irreverence lately, and pondering whether i could be an irreverent minister. On Friday, I happened to run into two of the most irreverent ministers I know walking out together in the Oakland airport.
I don’t live in Oakland and I’ve never been to the Oakland airport before. Not only are they there, but their ride is not and the person I’m waiting for did not get off the plane. This gave us an opportunity to chat for a while.
Choprah would say “that breaks the probability amplitude.” If a coincidence is improbable, that means we need to pay special attention to it. We write it down in our journal and circle it and put exclamation points. And then we wait and we remember. More will be revealed.